Battlestar Galactica? Doctor Who? Where Will My Nerddom Take Me Next?

It's time for something new. At the close of last year, I made a series of geek resolutions to guide me through the majesty of 2014. I've been slowly chipping away at most of them, but I've yet to touch one of the big ones: my resolution to take on a brand-new (to me) geek franchise in 2014. Frankly, I could use your help.

The thing is, there are a lot of great geek franchises out there that I've yet to explore. I'm not talking promising up-and-comers, but real, established classics. And most of them are pretty big, meaning it's not like I can just set aside a weekend and bang one out. I can be indecisive, too, and that's no help, either. Then there's the fact that, despite their popularity, there are reasons I haven't watched most of these. Add it all up, and what you've got is my crippling inability to pull the trigger on any of them.

That's where you come in. I'm outsourcing my decision to the wisdom of crowds, to be determined via the magic of social media and the comments section. I'm going to list my top candidates and give you a little background on why I've yet to see them -- and then you're going to help me decide, via eloquent, impassioned pleas for your favorite that will sway me to your point of view. Or, you know, I'll just count up all the votes for each franchise and just pick the most popular. Whatever. Without further ado, the candidates:

Doctor Who

I've never seen a full episode of Doctor Who -- not the old ones, not the new ones, nothing. Despite that, I'm quite familiar with the concept -- time-traveling alien flies around in space/time ship, righting wrongs and being British. I even know a fair bit of the lore, from Daleks to those weird angel statue things. I guess what's kept me away is the little snippets of the old, super cheesy Doctor Who of my childhood, half-remembered from watching two minutes via PBS and going, "Well, this is bullshit" before I flipped the channel to an old Twilight Zone rerun. Also, I tend to hate most time-travel stories because they rely on deus ex machina and ignore obvious paradoxes. Still, people love the Doctor and there's a brand-new one just about to launch, so...

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

This is the only Trek series I haven't watched significant chunks of, yet I'm told by many that is the best. Something about the fact that they were stuck on a space station always bothered me, I guess, or maybe it was just that I was suffering from Trek fatigue when it launched. Also, isn't there a Ferengi main character? Because, fuck, the Ferengi sucked. I do feel a lingering guilt that I've spent far more time with both Voyager and Enterprise, both of which were pretty bad, than with Deep Space Nine. Maybe it's time to rectify that?

Continue for more nerd franchises to choose from.

Farscape

I've tried to watch this twice, and gotten stopped less than halfway through the first season both times. The first attempt ended because of Netflix screwiness. The second was due to the fact my wife wasn't feeling it and a lack of time to watch by myself. Still, I really liked what I saw of this classic space opera with Muppets, even if lead Benjamin Browder is strangely twitchy in those first episodes. As much as I remember liking it, it is somewhat telling that I haven't found the desire to go back and watch it, despite owning the complete series on DVD (impulse buy a few years back).

Battlestar Galactica

When I mentioned not having seen this in a previous piece, someone threatened to have my nerd card pulled. Maybe that's reason enough to watch it? All I know is that I tried really hard to watch it a few years back and I couldn't get past episode six of the first season. There were just too damn many instances of bad writing and weird nonsense distracting me. Maybe I was just being a hater, given its insane popularity, or maybe I was just trying to save myself the heartbreak of what I had been told was an atrocious ending, but I just could not muster the interest to keep watching. Maybe you all can convince me I've made a huge mistake?

So, those are my top candidates. Have at them and let me know where my nerddom will take me next!

Find me on Twitter, where I tweet about geeky stuff and waste an inordinate amount of time: @casciato.